Spirituality, Corporate Culture, and American Business

By the early twenty-first century, Americans had embraced a holistic vision of work, that one's job should be imbued with meaning and purpose, that business should serve not only stockholders but also the common good, and that, for many, should attend to the "spiritual" health of individuals and society alike.

While many voices celebrate efforts to introduce "spirituality in the workplace" as a recent innovation that holds the potential to positively transform business and the American workplace, James Dennis LoRusso argues that workplace spirituality is in fact more closely aligned with neoliberal ideologies that serve the interests of private wealth and undermine the power of working people.

LoRusso traces how this new moral language of business emerged as part of the larger shift away from the post-New Deal welfare state towards today's global market-oriented social order. Building on other studies that emphasize the link between American religious conservatism and the rise of global capitalism, LoRusso shows how progressive "spirituality" remains a vital part of this story as well. Drawing on cultural history as well as case studies from New York City and San Francisco of businesses and leading advocates of workplace spirituality, this book argues that religion reveals much about work, corporate culture, and business in contemporary America.

Autorentext

James Dennis LoRusso is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for the Study of Religion, Princeton University, USA.

Inhalt

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part One: The Changing Discourse of Business

1. The Death and Resurrection of a Craftsman: Towards a New Mythology of Work
2. A New Business for Business
3. Management, Spirituality, and Religion: Theology and Spiritual Practice in Neoliberal Society
   Part Two: Religion and Spirituality In the New Economy
4. Zen and the Art of Microprocessing: Liberating the Entrepreneurial Spirit in Silicon Valley
5. Conscious Capitalism: Looser Selves, Freer Markets
   Part Three: Formations of Spiritual Labor
6. Not the Usual Suspects: Real Estate Rabbis, Monastic Managers, and Spiritual Salesmen in the Big Apple
7. Sacred Commerce: Neoliberal Spiritualities in a West-Coast Coffee Chain
   Conclusion
   Notes
   Selected Bibliography
   Index